Human power is one of the most ecologically friendly and healthy source of energy for transport. Two wheeled bicycles are very popular. Intending to expand the use of bicycles, market offers some additional accessories: a child seat, child and cargo trailers, travel bags, shopping baskets and so on.
While being more comfortable and safe for driving, recumbent trikes have even more features to be used for specific tasks. There is a small category of special recumbent vehicles patented and presented on the market: single-driver vehicles; tandem vehicles; passenger vehicles, like shown in U.S. Pat. No. 308, 499; cargo vehicles, like shown in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,863,183 or 4,740,004; electric tricycles and other.
All mentioned recumbent vehicles are designed for one specific task and transformation for performing another task is usually impossible.
It would be good to have a multifunctional vehicle that could be easily transformed to serve a different purpose, in accordance to the current situation. The best way to solve this issue would be to make a vehicle that has a modular structure, which would allow both the universality of use with minimization of size and weight.
The presented Modular Recumbent Vehicle has all of these features.
The Modular Recumbent Vehicle is a further development of the Folding Recumbent Vehicle described in Canadian Patent 2,628,222. New modular vehicle still has some features of the parent vehicle, such as a spring suspended and leaning seat, foot operated back pedaling brakes and a car-style steering mechanism; it also can be folded and disassembled. In the mean time, all of the features of modular design can be applied to all other, traditional recumbent trikes that have unsuspended seat, handlebar-style steering and hand operated brakes.
There are no other known patents related to the modular structure of recumbent vehicles.